Construction of a killer

Let’s talk about James Holmes, he is the twenty four year old white male that entered a crowded Colorado movie theater and shot and killed twelve people, wounding fifty eight, at the Midnight viewing of “Batman” on July 21, 2012. Holmes appears to exhibit signs of a sociopath, a mental condition that describes an individual who is incapable of sympathy or care for anyone else but themselves. They are described as con artists, self absorbed, anti-social, intelligent and charming with an utter disregard for society’s moral and legal standards.

Pundits and politicians who are tripping over themselves to enact gun control legislation explaining that the means in which Holmes brutally attacked innocent people, the reasons why the incident happened in the first place, are undoubtedly deceiving us. Scientists and experts in the field of criminology and neuroscience indicate that the sociopathic person is real, extremely dangerous, destructive and not easily diagnosed, with zero indication that this behavior has anything to do with legal firearms.

The sociopathic condition may be hereditary, environmental, and usually not cured, except with extended periods of time where the learned or biological behavior can be unraveled and conditioned to accept normal standards of behavior. Holmes may very well be a sociopath based upon the fact that he is a former Ph.D. candidate in neurosurgery at the University of Colorado and reportedly seeing a psychiatrist for mental and behavioral problems prior to the tragic incident. It would service the public well if pundits and politicians focused on these details so that in our attempts to avoid deadly incidents from occurring, the experts can predict and possibly prevent other such occurrences.

However, as a distraction and sometimes inadvertently, our society becomes insistent about implementing gun control laws, not because gun control laws have an effect on sociopathic behavior, but because pundits and politicians are looking for a quick fix, an answer to a problem that is sometimes un-fixable. Our society so absorbed with sensationalist media, which highlights all that is bad and illegal, they hardly ever recognize all that is good and legal; reality becomes obscured and a false knee-jerk reaction ensues.

The extreme version of the quick fix are anti-firearm proponents who see any disastrous occurrence as an open door to enact more gun control legislation, without mentioning that in the areas that gun control legislation is prominent, crime is prominent too.

For example, in a television interview with CNN on July 23, 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an avid gun control advocate, advised the public that a federal ban on assault weapons is a quick fix to the Colorado massacre without any evidence that federal gun control laws have an effect on violent crime.

Mayor Bloomberg’s irresponsible assertion that police officers ought to collectively “go on strike” until the public, through the legislature, enact gun control laws that keep us safe. This makes the responsible adult respond in the manner of “Huh?” Bloomberg’s view is not just blatantly dangerous to innocent Americans but reminiscent of the kind of tyrannical control that our founding father’s warned us about.

Societies, who are aghast by the sociopath, also seek a quick fix erroneously concluding that if Holmes did not have access to firearms, the killing of innocent people would not have occurred. However, sociopaths operating without regard to societal norms, will use any means of destruction, whether legal or not, and do not proscribe by accepted and normal rules of conduct, like the rest of us try to do.

The movie theater where Holmes went on his rampage is designated as a “gun free” zone by authorities. Here is the perfect example of how a legal restriction has failed to protect innocent people. If just one courageous individual in the theater was equipped with a legal firearm, less destruction may have occurred.

In fact, firearms serve the innocent owner exceptionally well by having a means to protect themselves from the sociopath or burglar, who are not innocent at all. For example, on July 13, 2012, at an internet café in Marion County, Florida, when burglars entered the premises wearing masks and brandishing a gun and a bat at the patrons, a Senior Citizen, Samuel Williams, having a concealed carry weapon, shot at the burglars, causing them to exit the premises and be caught by the authorities for detainment. What would have happened if the internet café had been designated a “gun free” zone? We will never know.

Gun control laws restrict innocent Americans from using their firearms. Firearms sale, ownership and use, are rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. Many of our founding fathers were quite clear that the right of the People to have firearms is imperative for the survival of our Constitutional Republic.

The formulation of the Constitution and specifically the Second Amendment ascertains that we the People are individuals free to determine our own destiny in our rightful pursuit of liberty and happiness. We are a Nation of rules determined by the People via our elected officials. We are personally responsible for our own actions; actions that have consequences. We have the right to protect ourselves and our property from unlawful actions against us. And, finally, we have the right to have weapons in the horrible scenario that our government becomes tyrannical and the need for a People uprising is necessary and good to preserve freedom.

Those that seek to obstruct this formula of a successful Constitutional Republic, have no business in formulating laws to begin with. Our elected officials make oaths to abide by the United States Constitution, but once in power become consumed with implementing regulation upon regulation, law upon law, and tax upon tax that place useless burdens upon innocent Americans. These officials eventually become deaf, dumb and blind to our rights of individual liberty, and under the guise of safety, seek control, power, and money over anything else. Big government with too much power, control and money is tantamount to tyranny.

Do not fall for the trap that individual liberty can be micromanaged by government officials and thus provide for a safer society. Taking away certain liberties does not protect society from sociopaths nor violent crimes. To conclude that there is a quick fix to sociopathic behavior is unreal and untrue. Indeed there is no quick fix to handling deviants, but there are ways for the individual to protect themselves, and that is by being armed.

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” (Thomas Jefferson’s “Commonplace Book,” 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764)